Events for November 27, 2013

Painter Jacob Lawrence is known for using a series format to render in colorful expressive imagery and text the narrative stories of historical African American figures like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Each of the eight works on view in Jacob Lawrence's Genesis Series (1990) describes a passage from the book of Genesis in the King James version of the Bible.

The Book of the Faiyum is an exquisitely illustrated papyrus from Greco-Roman Egypt. One of the most intriguing ancient representations of a place ever found, the papyrus depicts the Faiyum oasis, located to the west of the Nile, as a center of prosperity and ritual. Egyptian jewelry, papyri, statues, reliefs and ritual objects will illuminate the religious context that gave rise to this enigmatic text, which celebrates the crocodile god Sobek and his special relationship with the Faiyum.

During the late 19th and early 20th century, fine book binding enjoyed a golden age of creativity and lavish decoration. These handmade, individual and highly personal objects were made not only to protect the texts they contained, but also to be admired and appreciated as portable decorative masterpieces in their own right.